


a king with crown's treasure

by zvyozdochka



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 1908 Olympics, A Lot of Plot, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Communist Revolutions, Fluff and Angst, Ice Skating, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Russo-Japanese War, Slow Burn, World War I, communist!yurio, i'm sticking as close as i can to history, prince of japan yuuri, so there's angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-02 11:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10943964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zvyozdochka/pseuds/zvyozdochka
Summary: At the turn of the century, the imperial empires of Russia and Japan have finished their battle for control of Korea. But the war is not over yet, as Prince Katsuki Yuuri of Japan is thrown into a foreign world of politics and civil unrest as a diplomatic measure. With seeming years ahead of him in a country that is not his own, he must learn to survive- if only he hadn't caught the attention of figure skating prodigy and Tsar's ward, Viktor Nikiforov.





	1. a leafless tree

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my very first chaptered work! I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> The title comes from 'The Dream' by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin:
> 
> Not long ago, in a charming dream,  
> I saw myself -- a king with crown's treasure;  
> I was in love with you, it seemed,  
> And heart was beating with a pleasure.  
> I sang my passion's song by your enchanting knees.  
> Why, dreams, you didn't prolong my happiness forever?  
> But gods deprived me not of whole their favor:  
> I only lost the kingdom of my dreams.

> The crow has flown away;  
>  swaying in the evening sun,  
>  a leafless tree. 
> 
> The Crow Has Flown Away  
>  Natsume Sōseki

Hiroko’s Inn was a place with no name. There was some story there, Yuuri had always thought. In his childhood days it was what he would contemplate for hours on end when Yuuko was helping her mother with housework and Takeshi was off with the other boys. He would sit under the cherry blossom trees at the back of their garden and come up with stories, each more outrageously fantastic than the last.

He would tell the funniest to Takeshi, the sweetest to Yuuko, the silliest to Mari-nee, to try to get her to smile. 

_The name was too impolite for anyone but Hiroko to know._

_A pirate king gave it to her to mind while he was at sea, and she could not name what was not properly hers._

_She lost a bet to a sign painter._

_She was a princess, a gift of the gods themselves, and so she never named the Inn because she was waiting for the gods to bring her back into her rightful place in heaven._

He had hundreds by now, knew each story in intricate detail, each little point about the naval captain she had offended and was on the run from, the minutiae of the court life she had had before she was cast out for consorting with commoners. It became more habit than hobby, though. Something to while away the time between helping his mother with the housework and sneaking out to Minako. Something to occupy him.

An offhand comment, Hiroko’s cooking deemed a treasure? A dragon had taken her away and demanded she cook for him in his nameless tavern. Hiroko mentioned liking a kimono in town? She was a world famous designer looking to escape the limelight.

He fancied himself a weaver of tales, in the quiet of that backyard. A solver of mysteries. More than the odd jittery feeling he would get when he was asked a question, more than the scared little boy from Hasetsu town, Hiroko’s odd little boy, the girly one. The stories of the nameless inn grew to become complicated epics, quests and romances that he would sometimes share with Yuuko and her endless enthusiasm. Takeshi, too, if he was feeling particularly brave. It gave him something, when he was younger. Something irreplaceable, something like the confidence he lacked.

In those days, Yuuri was a young boy with a bright mind, few friends, and an excess of spare time. Hiroko really should be grateful that this was all he was getting up to.

The thing was, it wasn’t. Not really. There was only so many stories he could occupy himself with creating before he felt himself coming apart at the seems, felt the walls of his home like a cage instead of protection.

He was seven, when he had first snuck out in the middle of the night. It was two weeks later that he tried it again.

He ran face first into the surprisingly strong body of a woman. He fell. She helped him up, forcing him to his feet. In an odd sort of way, that was when his life had really started, with a fall and a helping hand, and the odd look in her eyes when she glanced at his cheekbones, his nose, his eyes.

_Who are you?_ she had asked, searching. _Katsuki Yuuri_ , he had stuttered out, and he could’ve hit himself for it. Manners, manners, a lifetime of a mother’s rebukes. Manners. He had bowed, introduced himself properly, saw the woman’s face set in what he would later remember as determined stubbornness. 

_Minako_ , she told him. _But Minako-sensei to you, Katsuki._

He didn’t know what she had seen in him, then. His wild mind made up countless threads unspooling from her steady grip.

She took him under her wing, and snuck him out to teach him to write and to read, to hold silverware and to ask a girl to dance. She never did say where she had learned it all. He learned quickly enough not to ask.

He caught her dancing, and fancied her a ballerina, the kind that the town drunks talked of into their cups and Hiroko’s listening ear. The ones of Russia, who danced on their toes like goddesses, the ones that embodied grace and beauty like no mere mortal ever could. Ones who danced their emotions, let their feet tell the tale, let the lines of their body speak for them.

He told her this, one day when he was eight, watched her fingers tremble and her eyes dart away. She left early, the noon sun still high in the sky, and he had realised then that perhaps his stories were more than just words in his head. 

Minako came back with no explanation, but she set him in the middle of the floor and told him to stretch, and he figured he was forgiven. She taught him ballroom, and then ballet, and something wistful lay behind her gaze when she watched the strength of his jumps and the drag-thump-thud of his feet on the floor.

Spring came with a spray of white and pink on his story tree, and went with the green of leaves and the scent of laundry and chicken katsu on the air. He had no more answers than he did that first day, but the stories in his head were a little quieter when he left them on the floor of Minako’s house.

He danced. He danced and danced and danced and his mother, bless her heart, gave him soft linen for his feet when she found out.

Arabesque, and time slipped by, and the men of his village left to fight the war.

Pirouette, and he taught Yuuko to plié, and Takeshi whispered ghost stories of Russian soldiers and battleships, telling him that his brother had sent letters home of the war.

He danced, and word came that they won, and there was talk of peace on the horizon. He had almost forgotten the days where he used his words to tell his stories, where he lay restless and wondered about questions that had no answer. 

In the end, the truth of it seemed almost more unreal than anything he dreamt up.

A letter from the Emperor.

A letter from the Emperor, to _him_.

And suddenly he was right all along, because here was the reason for Hiroko’s Nameless Inn, and here was Minako’s firm hand and searching gaze, hours upon weeks upon months teaching a poor son of an innkeeper the ins and outs of noble life. A story, fantastic and absurd.

His mother, the fling of an emperor.

The inn, nameless so that she could be faceless.

Minako, a woman once of the court, and a dancer.

And Katsuki Yuuri, a Prince of Japan. Called to honour his father, his Imperial Majesty, as a permanent diplomatic presence in the Court of the Tsar.

His mother’s tears were the only vivid thing from that day, the look on her face when he turned to her, askance. The shrill note in her voice when, engulfed by a hug, she told him he could not return to Hasestu.

Everything else was a dizzying blur, white noise and ground spinning beneath him, and all he could think, all he would ever think, was that if this was a story like the ones he had told, then he wanted no part in it.


	2. tremble on the waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trip was measured in staccato bursts and long intervals where Yuuri would sit, quite alone, and think of nothing in particular. It was as though he was underwater, or asleep. As though he dreamed in snapshots.

 

> In the valley stream, scattered autumn leaves  
>  Tremble on the waves alone and together…  
>  Momiji, Traditional Japanese Song

 

_The trip was measured in staccato bursts and long intervals where Yuuri would sit, quite alone, and think of nothing in particular. It was as though he was underwater, or asleep. As though he dreamed in snapshots._

 

The soldier’s feet were a steady thump on the hard packed dirt of the road. The sun was high in the vaults of endless blue, and Yuuri took one last look at Hasetsu. Memorised, while he still could, the facade of the ninja palace, the little town tucked into the curves of the seaside, his mother’s inn. The road curved, and it disappeared.

 

 

Camp was a hassle, to put up and then take down tents, to prepare dinner. Yuuri wished he could help, could set up the fire, could fetch the food, could tend to the weary soldiers as his mother would have done. Minako-sensei quelled him with a glare that read what have I taught you and he sat, quietly, next to her. She slipped him an extra portion of rations the next day, with an apologetic smile. They rode on.

 

 

His gelding was a gift from his mother, and in hindsight, that perhaps should have been a clue. A peasant woman, even one who ran an inn as successful as Hiroko’s, should not have been able to afford such a fine horse as Vicchan. Clouds gathered overhead, but Vicchan was sturdy and sweet beneath him. The soreness of his spine and the tension in his thighs did not stop him from smiling as he ran a hand through Vicchan’s mane. 

 

 

The road was endless, the scenery a watercolour painting liable to run. 

 

 

Yuuri stopped, staring at the crashing waves and the cold iron grey of the sky. It was a familiar sight, one Hasetsu held at this time of year. Seagulls rose and fell in the empty expanse, and he felt a string in his eyes.

The salt, he muttered under his breath, and furtively wiped them on his sleeve, appreciating the discretion of the guards around him to look away. Hasetsu. He had avoided thinking about it, but faced with the imposing mass of the battleship in from of him and its towering smoke stacks, he had no choice. This was the last he would see of Japan: Sakaiminato and its weathered walls, its fields and docks and railway. Similar to Hasetsu, but different in all the ways that counted.

Minako-sensei nudged him, for once quiet with her worry, aware of the stern faced guards around them. He struggled to give her a smile, and nodded. He would go on. The letter burning in his satchel would allow him no less.

It’s an honour to serve my country and my family, he said. The wind stole his words away, snatched their humble intonation and twisted them into the cry of the seagulls, the lap of the water.

Minako-sensei said nothing as he urged Vicchan onwards, the chocolate gelding whickering gently. He slipped a hand down the soft coat, infinitely grateful for the horse’s gentle nature, the years of rearing Yuuri had undertaken, the understanding between horse and rider. The playful cantering and excited jumps had given way for a steady gait, one meant to soothe, one meant to comfort.

He wished he could take Vicchan with him. But then, he wished a lot of things.

The seagulls cried. The waves dashed themselves against jagged rocks. The hull of the Mikasa consumed the horizon.

 

 

Japan fell away, but it was Yuuri who felt his stomach drop. Minako-sensei gave him a hug, tight and comforting and desperate. She had not told him if she was coming with him to the capital of Russia. Japan fell away, his mother and sister and world with it, and he thought he knew the answer already.

 

 

The breeze burst over the sides of the Mikasa where the waves could not, tangling his hair in its salty fingers and tugging at his clothes. The sailors went about their business, and his guards stood at rest, allowing the ebb and swell of the rolling waves to relax their solemnity, the drink to loosen their tongues.

It was funny, Yuuri thought, watching them. How differently people behaved amidst their fellows. He was used to being around drunks, being the rice paper in the edge of their vision, the clean table under their elbows, the quiet in the kitchen. To be… more, somehow, as if he was not the same Katsuki Yuuri that had helped Hiroko pour sake, to be above it all…

Well, it was funny, was all. Odd. Different. Yuuri was used to different, but he almost preferred invisibility to this constant awareness.

He turned back to the sea, away from the worried gaze of Minako-sensei, and watched the ocean rail against the endless blue of the sky.

 

 

Vladivostok was loud, louder than he was used to, and none of it understandable. Minako-sensei did not hold his hand as she introduced him to Yakov, did not ruffle his hair as she said goodbye. Instead, her willowy form bent to embrace him, as if in a breeze, and she told him to pass her regards on to Madame Lilia Baranovskaya.

Yakov was a wall, in more ways than one. Tall, imposing, and utterly blank, he was to be Yuuri’s escort and personal guard on his trip. 

He watched Minako-sensei walk away, until she was lost in the crowd, in the labyrinth of tangled streets.

 

 

The train shuddered along rail lines at a pace both too slow and too fast at once

Of all the ways he had traveled, Yuuri thought this was the worst. The landscape shifted between endless swathes of flat planes to the occasional farm, and Yuuri felt nothing. As if all his happiness had been drained out by the endless whirring of the wheels and the silver tracks that stretched into the distance.

He peered into that fathomless stretch, hoping for some sign of a town or a village or something, anything that might indicate that this, one of many nondescript days aboard the train, may be his last. 

He had no idea how long he would be forced to sit there. The cabin was beautiful, of that there was no doubt. Marble floors and crystal decanters, a lavish lounge and a bookshelf in the corner; it was more fit for a room in a palace than a train carriage. He had tried, early on, to crack open a book to while away the time. He had been greeted with odd letters and indecipherable words, ones that spelled out his death sentence on this trip. 

He sighed, and looked out the window. Again. There was, of course, nothing.

He had been bored before, but never like this. The playful smirk of Takeshi and Yuuko’s cheerful eyes had always kept him from drifting too much. At least he could have talked to them, if he had been bored. No one in Russia spoke Japanese, of course- and his limited English had been exhausted on the fourth day of conversing with Yakov.

Night began to fall, and as he did every other evening, he spared his escort the hassle of holding their tongues in front of him and ate alone.

He would be doing that a lot, he thought, spooning the salty stew into his mouth, barely tasting it. He tore of a chunk of bread, missed the ease and elegance of chopsticks and rice.

 

 

 

The train wore on, weeks on end, stopping here and there for supplies and fuel. Yakov let him off once, in a little town with a flea market. He eyed a worn pair of boots, his own a little small, the sole not quite coming off as he walked but not settling as it should. He had no money, of course, and he walked on, seeing here and there little pieces of jewellery, buttons, and animals. Yakov hustled him back on the train with a sturdy shove, muttering something in angry sounding Russian. 

He did not leave the train after that.

 

 

 

He stayed only the night in Moscow, but it was one he would not soon forget. Spiralling towers dominated the sky, lights burned around cobbled streets, and there were more people there than he had thought existed in the whole world. 

There was a boy, in the road, his mother dressed in lace and heavy skirts, her arm linked through a that of a tall soldier, a laugh on her tongue. He could not have been older than five, Yuuri thought, and felt his heart crack at how the boy’s mother did not hold his hand, the weary look in his eyes. The eyes of a soldier, he thought. The boy looked at the cars around him with a flat mouth, feet hesitating on the pavement. He saw the boy shove his hands in his pockets, pick up the pace, a downcast scowl twisting his angelic visage.

“Yuuri!” called a voice, and he turned to see Yakov, gruff and imposing as ever, gesturing at him to hurry up.

He turned back, some part of him screaming to take the boy’s hand, to tug him along to the train station, take him away from it all. But there was no sign of the boy, or his wayward mother.

Yakov called him again, impatiently, and he went.

 

 

 

Time, as all things, became irrelevant.  
It had been four weeks, five weeks, perhaps six. 

 

Another train. 

 

Another station. 

 

 

 

Another sunset.

 

 

 

 

Time, as all things, did not exist in a void. A railway is not infinite.

 

 

 

 

 

Yuuri came to with a blink and the feeling of dried drool setting in around his mouth. There was something firm and soft resting cool under his cheek, a sea of white- sheets, it must be. Against a mattress that was far too big, far too cloud like for his tastes. Pillows lay flung haphazardly at the top of his bed.

He shut his eyes, briefly, and allowed himself to think wistfully of his futon at home, in Japan. The scent of tatami in his nose, the feel of it on his bare feet, the gentle washing of the sea and the quiet of the onsen.

He opened them again, to find the world bleary as it woke up, the sun barely over the horizon. 

He got up, and changed, after a moment of thought, into his finery.

Things look different here, in the light, he thought, as he tugged one arm through the sleeve.

They had arrived late in the night, and Yuuri, exhausted, had been greeted by a kindly woman, her face almost as soft as Yuuri’s own mother. He was ashamed to admit he did not remember much, only that he was ushered through a confusing array of halls, doors and corridors, up and down and up stairs, and into the softest bed he had ever seen, and then sleep.

The walls of his room were a soft yellow, so soft it was almost cream, and his bed was richly hung with thick curtains. He squinted, and paused in tying a knot in his yukata. He grasped one edge of the curtain, and pulled it. A scene, embroidered in a masterful array of colours and detail, met him, of a young man holding a tool of some sort, and an old woman holding a flower, mountains in the background.

He suppressed a noise; he was not quite sure whether it would come out as a gasp of awe or a snort of disbelief. Embroidered curtains, whatever next?

Finishing tying his sash, he observed the rest of the room. A fireplace, clean and simple, opposite the bed, a mantle, conspicuously empty, above it. A wardrobe in the corner, and a table with a mirror next to it. A window, and this, he walked over to.

Outside, the sun limned leaves and dripped into dappled pools of light. A rose garden, not yet in bloom, lay under the window, but beyond that- a forest, beautifully red and gold with autumn. It was a conflagration of colour, and Yuuri stood still, awestruck for a moment.

It was different in Japan, of course. Their trees shed leaves as any other, but the real delight was the sakura in spring, sprays of white and pastel pink wreathing the delicate branches of trees, drifting daintily to the floor.

Russia, it seemed, favoured something bolder. The trees were tall and strong, trunks thick and leaves broad. 

Yuuri, reluctant to break the spell, opened the window and sat on the sil, legs swinging outside and into the chilly air.

The autumn smelled of freshly overturned dirt and woodfire smoke. He breathed it in, and waited.

 

A knock came at the door at around eight o’clock by the sun, a gentle rap of knuckles and a muffled call. He started, flung his legs inside, cursed under his breath when the window stuck as he tried to slam it closed.

A boy entered, youthful and bright eyed. He stared a moment at Yuuri, who must surely be a sight in his mussed clothes near an open window, he berated himself—

The boy giggled.

It was Yuuri’s turn to stare.

“ทำอะไรอยู่ครับ,” said the boy.

“すみません, ごめんなさい!” said Yuuri.

There was another moment of silence.

The two burst out laughing.

“Yuuri, my name is Yuuri,” Yuuri choked through his amusement.

“Phichit, I have no English,” the dark skinned boy chirped with a wide grin.

Perhaps Russia was not so bad after all.

 

After several false starts, a lot of gesturing and repeated exclamations in words that the other did not understand, Yuuri was hustled by Phichit into his formal kimono, and then his hakama. The fabric, even folded properly into the seven pleats, fell a little too far past his ankles, as was to be expected from the cast-offs of his royal brothers. 

Brothers. 

It was a strange thought, that somewhere, in Tokyo or Nagoya, were other boys who shared Yuuri's blood. He had tried not to think of it, before, but he could not help but imagine the distant figures of gossip and posters wearing the very clothes he wore now.

Phichit made a curious noise, plucked at the long sleeves of the kimono and the dark stripes of the hakama. Yuuri smiled, but it was a little shaky. He had done this before, the folds, the obi, had even slipped his feet in the formal zori sandals. It held a different kind of weight, though, to know his country would be judged on his work, his dress, the state of his hair.

Phichit grasped his shoulder, eyes open and worried. It was a lingering warmth, one that Yuuri had not felt since Minako-sensei had left, the kind that seeps through the heavy cloth and settles in Yuuri's chest. A moment of kinship, of silent strength. A burst of that foreign language, utterly incomprehensible, and Yuuri felt his spirits lift. 

That hand slipped down to tug at his sleeve, and then Yuuri was taken from the comfort of the only familiar place he knew to greet his hosts. 

The Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. No matter how many times he repeated it in his head or whispered it aloud, it never got any easier to accept.

Phichit chattered away in his language— Thai, Yuuri remembered, he said it was Thai— as he seamlessly navigated the halls. Yuuri wondered vaguely at the decorum of a servant boy tugging a prince through a foreign palace by his kimono. What would his father say, if he could see him now?

A burst of bitterness touched his palate. His father had never seen him before, what did it matter now? A bastard son that—

He let Phichit turn him down a corridor, walking a little faster, the price of his dignity as a prince a worthy cause, he thought, in gaining a friend.

There were marble floors, Yuuri realised in disbelief, under their feet. He said as much to Phichit, who looked at him blankly but smiled at him all the same. Marble floors. How ridiculous.

He looked around, then, trusting Phichit to guide him. Lanterns fixed to ornate walls, doors of decorated wood and paintings hung around as though they weren’t priceless works of art; what kind of people designed this place? Why would anyone possibly need so much useless frippery?

He jolted to a stop, realising suddenly that Phichit’s chatter had died off, his wrist released in an instant. He and Phichit were no longer alone.

Standing by the most impressive pair of doors Yuuri had ever seen were a pair of guards, dressed in red, swords strapped to belts and chests crossed with decorative gold braid.

A cold breeze swept through Yuuri, and left him trembling in the corridor. Phichit was a silent shadow at his back, unnaturally still. 

He breathed in, remembered the letter he kept in his pocket, and exhaled. Do your father and your country proud. Do not shame your mother, or the teachings of Minako-sensei.

He stepped forward, and the guards opened the doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dialogue:  
> ทำอะไรอยู่ครับ - 'what are you doing?' polite, to a man.  
> すみません, ごめんなさい! - 'excuse me, sorry!'
> 
> i googled these, and whilst i know the japanese is ok the thai is a shot in the dark so pls correct me if it needs changing!
> 
>  
> 
> as the nerd i am, i did a lot of research to get Yuuri's travel times as accurate as possible, and then i used it as vaguely as i knew how. i have a comprehensive timeline if anyone’s interested. i’m gonna presume not tho, just know that it took Yuuri five weeks five days to get from Hasetsu to Saint Petersburg. Yes, this was historically accurate as i could make it. There was maths and a lot of googling.
> 
>  
> 
> title comes from a japanese traditional song from this website: http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2471
> 
> ^ it’s v v pretty i’d check out the rest of it if i were you
> 
>  
> 
> if you wanna yell at me feel free to leave a comment or check out my tumblr: blazing-ball-of-sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> expect infrequent updates but overall a hopefully lengthy fic. leave a comment if you have any questions or, well, comments :P


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